Ch.3So that bastard is the one who’s going to take my virgin away (3)

“Waaaaaah!”

“Teacher! Doha-min made Min-ji cry!”

In elementary school, once a month, it was the day to change seats in class.

Nine out of ten girls who ended up sitting next to Ha-min would bury their faces in their desks and burst into tears.

During this regular monthly event, Ha-min would turn his head away from his crying desk partner with a complicated expression.

What words of comfort could he possibly offer?

When he was the cause of those tears.

To put it in terms of a lottery at the stationery store in front of the elementary school,

getting the seat next to Ha-min was itself a “dud.”

Regardless of whether it was in front of the teacher’s desk or by the window in the back.

“We changed seats by drawing lots, so crying won’t help.”

“Hey, just endure it for a month.”

Things were at least better in elementary school.

Being disappointed with the results and shedding tears only lasted until elementary school.

“Hey, Do Ha-min. Let’s switch seats. I want to sit next to Min-ji.”

“N-now…?”

“We just need to switch until the homeroom teacher comes for fifth period. We won’t get caught, I’m telling you.”

“But still…”

“Oh, shit. Look at you stuttering. Answer quickly. Will you switch or not?”

After entering middle school, the kids started resolving their dissatisfaction with their seating arrangements on their own.

Thanks to the fact that homeroom teachers didn’t stay in the classroom for long.

One day, he’d be at the front by the teacher’s desk.

Another day, by the classroom door.

As a result, Ha-min spent most of his middle school years at someone else’s desk.

“What’s this, Do Ha-min? Yesterday you were at that end, why are you up front today?”

“Ah… well…”

“Did someone ask you to switch seats?”

“…”

“Hey, don’t think about chatting during the teacher’s lesson. Whoever switched seats with Do Ha-min, get back to your own seat quickly. Before I tell your homeroom teacher.”

The worst cases were when they occasionally encountered observant teachers who caught them switching seats.

When told to return to their original seats, a confused Ha-min would stand up and look toward his seat,

and the student sitting there would reluctantly rise with a deeply furrowed brow.

“Haa… shit. Do Ha-min, you idiot. You can’t even act natural about one thing.”

Those words that brushed past his ear as he passed the student who had asked to switch seats, returning to his original seat under the teacher’s guidance.

That remains a trauma in Do Ha-min’s memory to this day.

In the classroom where Ha-min was, there were kids who wanted his “seat,”

but no one who wanted the seat “next to him.”

“Move that bag.”

“M-move it…? Why?”

“Because I’m going to sit next to you.”

Except for this girl who appeared before Ha-min now,

with the name “Ban Do-young” embroidered on her left chest.

“Ah, I want to have sex.”

“Huh?”

Did I just hear that wrong?

Ha-min, faced with this crazy girl who wanted to sit next to him, doubted his own perfectly normal ears instead.

‘Some new form of bullying… or something like that.’

His first thought was, predictably, suspicion that he had become a target of bullying.

The idea that she had noticed he wasn’t a local student

and was setting him up in advance crept into his mind.

Otherwise, there’s no way a girl with a face like that would say such things to someone she just met.

The memories of his nine years of school life, whether he wanted them or not, tipped the scales in one direction.

But even so, it was impossible to ignore what she had just said and act like nothing happened.

Ha-min was thoroughly in the subordinate position in this conversation; he couldn’t ignore or brush off what the dominant party was saying.

“Sigh… with all this body fat, why am I still so sensitive to cold? I can’t understand this body. Really, these are useless parts except when seducing men, right?”

“Uh, yeah…”

Without properly understanding what she meant, Ha-min just nodded along.

Perhaps thanks to their brief exchange,

the shadow over Do-young’s eyes softened slightly.

This was a first for Ha-min.

For a girl sitting next to him to have her expression change positively.

“Um…”

“Hmm? Finally decided to talk to me? What is it? Tell me.”

“Th-there are many other seats… why here?”

“Obviously because it’s cold. It’s warmer to be closer to human warmth, isn’t it?”

“I-I see…”

To Do-young’s seemingly friendly questions about his constitution,

Ha-min answered each one, albeit awkwardly.

Though his voice became somewhat clumsy due to nervousness without him realizing it,

unlike the other kids who had harassed him in middle school, Do-young didn’t show the same unpleasant expression from earlier when hearing his halting speech.

“You don’t feel cold? Having the window open in this weather.”

“Ah, no… I just felt a bit stuffy… thought some fresh air might help…”

“Oh, you must have a lot of body heat. Are you a Taeyangin?”

“Tae-Taeyangin…?”

“Ah, kids these days don’t know about these things.”

Ha-min tilted his head at the unfamiliar term.

Was this some trendy slang among the popular kids?

“Well, I’ve never really been sensitive to cold… but I’m not so warm that I never catch colds… I even got COVID once in middle school…”

“Hmm, so COVID existed here too. Let me see your hand. Let’s see how warm it is.”

“N-no… wait!”

Ha-min pulled back, dragging his desk with him, as Do-young suddenly tried to grab his hand.

If he had leaned back a little more forcefully, or if Do-young had grabbed his hand a moment later, he might have fallen over with his chair.

“Ah, it’s cold…”

“Your hand is the warm one.”

The moment their palms touched, Ha-min felt goosebumps all over his body.

Was it because her hand was soft? Or just because it was cold?

“Ooh, your hand is bigger than I thought? It’s about one joint longer than mine?”

Despite thinking she was larger than him in every way,

surprisingly, Do-young’s hands were significantly smaller and daintier than Ha-min’s.

They say the smaller and whiter the hands, the more they conform to traditional beauty standards.

By that measure, even this girl’s hands were beautiful.

“Your hand is very warm. Do you exercise regularly?”

“Ah, no. I just walked from the station to school because I didn’t want to waste bus fare.”

“Hmm. But why do you keep pulling back? Aren’t you being too scared? Hehe…”

A faint smile appeared on Do-young’s previously shadowed face.

He had thought she was pretty even with her frowning face, but it was nothing compared to her smiling one.

‘Maybe she’s not such a bad person after all…’

Ha-min’s thoughts about Do-young became a bit more flexible, and his wariness eased.

‘Her name is… Ban Do-young.’

The eased wariness soon led to curiosity about her.

Ha-min’s gaze naturally drifted to Do-young’s name embroidered in orange thread.

“Hey, where are you looking right now?”

“…Ah.”

Ha-min’s gaze, checking her name tag, met Do-young’s.

Names are typically embroidered on the left “chest” of the uniform according to school rules.

“This guy… so it wasn’t my hand you were interested in, but this area?”

“No, this is…! I was just trying to see your name…!”

-Thud

As Ha-min waved his hands in panic,

he accidentally knocked over the bag he was trying to move.

Items spilled out from the unzipped bag.

Most were workbooks related to college entrance exams.

That would have been fine.

It could have given the impression of an exemplary student preparing for college from the first day of school.

If he played it right, she might have judged him as someone uninterested in socializing and focused only on studying,

losing interest and leaving him alone.

If only purely workbooks had fallen out.

“What’s this?”

“Th-that’s…”

Just one book.

There was one book in Ha-min’s bag that had nothing to do with textbooks or workbooks.

[Magical Girl Marina★Farina]

Ha-min’s cherished novel that he had kept despite clearing out everything else to focus on studying before entering high school.

It was a magical girl story celebrating the human spirit, fighting to the end without losing hope in a desperate cosmic horror world.

“I couldn’t find it anywhere in my bookshelf or drawers, so why is it here…”

The last volume he couldn’t find while disposing of his favorite novels and comics to focus his mind.

That one volume happened to appear now, in Ha-min’s bag.

The illustration of Marina, the protagonist and magical girl of hope, was the first to show its face on top of the pile of spilled books, outshining all the other workbooks.

As if she had been in a fierce battle, her clothes were torn,

and through those torn pieces, important pink areas were almost but not quite exposed—a provocative cover that made an impression.

“Hmm, so you like this kind of thing.”

-Click

Do-young quickly took out her phone and photographed the novel’s cover.

“G-give that back!”

“Wait, let me see… Ooh, is she the protagonist? Magical girl protagonists are usually flat, but she’s quite big?”

“G-give it back now!”

“Ah, but I think mine are still bigger.”

“Seriously…!”

“How does she transform? Like this? Pure★Change!”

“That’s not how it works…!”

Do-young raised both hands above her head making peace signs.

Despite its provocative content, it resembled a popular idol anime, which irritated Ha-min even more.

But no matter how much he stretched his arms, Ha-min’s height couldn’t reach Do-young’s hand holding the book.

“Give it back, I was going to throw it away anyway!”

“Well, if you’re going to throw it away, let me see it a little… I want to see what magical girl stories are like here.”

“Stop it and give it back-“

-Screech!

Just then, the back door of the classroom opened with a loud noise.

“Hey, Ban Do-young! You really are here early! What’s the occasion, coming to school so early!”

“Eek…!”

Female students wearing the same uniform poured in through the back door one after another.

Judging by how they immediately greeted Do-young, they seemed to be her female friends.

“Huh? Who’s that guy?”

“I’ve never seen him before.”

“Do-young, do you know him?”

“Hmm… sort of.”

“I’m… doomed.”

Ha-min instinctively sensed he was cornered.

Not only had he been caught with his novel by a female classmate, but that fact was about to spread to other peers.

He was precisely following the worst possible route that could be perceived as the absolute worst.

“Hey.”

“…Huh?”

“What are you doing? Hurry up and put it away.”

Above Ha-min’s downcast gaze,

a pale hand appeared, offering him the novel he had dropped.

“They haven’t seen it yet. Put it away quickly.”

Do-young whispered in Ha-min’s ear, in a voice only he could hear.

Do-young, whose voice had been confident and lively until just now, shielded Ha-min’s novel from the view of the students behind her.

Her hands were so small that parts of “Ma” and “Nyeo” peeked through, making “Magical Girl” look like “Witch,”

but she still managed to cover Marina’s illustration with its exposed cleavage.

“The teachers said all students waiting in classrooms should gather in the auditorium, Do-young, you come quickly too.”

“Oh, okay. I’m coming now.”

Do-young handed the novel to Ha-min and followed the other students out of the classroom.

Ha-min stood there for a moment, blankly holding the novel Do-young had given him.

“What are you doing? Hurry up and come too.”

“Uh, yeah…”

Do-young peeked her head out from the classroom doorway.

“Pure★Change.”

“Damn it…! I told you that’s not it!”

The witch’s double peace sign was just a bonus.